Free
by QuickSilverFox3
Summary: A Nation cannot favour one group of their citizens over another, especially during war. So what happens when England does? An England centric fic with no pairings. I apologize for the shortness of it. Set during the English Civil War.


When England was first told of what his boss called atrocities, he couldn't believe what had happened either. England knew that Parliament had been… upset with way his boss, the king was handling the situation. Arthur didn't have to venture out onto the streets to realise this; he could feel it coiling in his stomach like a venomous snake, just waiting to do something. And now Parliament had declared war on the king. England was going to have their first civil war.

Getting into the Roundheads (as they called themselves) camp was easily done. He was the personification of England after all and also the dreaded Captain Kirkland! Smirking slightly to himself he ran a gloved finger down the length of his well-cared for sword. The task he was given seemed simple enough: Infiltrate the camp and kill the main leader who as it turned out was some 'uncultured nobody from the back end of beyond.' Normally England disliked any of his citizens being talked to like this but it was true! Oliver Cromwell had been a nobody for the first forty years of his life yet here he was almost single-handedly running the entire opposing army.

The man knew how to run an army, England would give him that much. Cromwell was walking calmly from tent to tent speaking with everyone whose path he crossed. From watching their face, Arthur was amazed. They believed so strongly that they were in the right; that they could win against someone who believed it was their right given to them by God to rule. Only one monarch in England's mind had held the God given right to rule, and they were gone. They out of all of his other bosses had consulted frequently with him and gave him the freedom to roam the seas as a pirate; as he was meant to.

His hand tightened reflexively around the blade, drawing a hiss from him as the sharpened metal sliced open his palm.  
"Are you alright friend?"  
Green eyes met brown.  
"Yes. I'm fine. Thank you for asking." Even to people who were betraying the king, Arthur could not be anything less than a gentleman.  
"Please follow me and we'll get you patched up. Can't have an injured solider who has manners like that, regardless of which side they are on."  
Arthur had wordlessly followed Cromwell into an ordinary looking tent, indistinguishable to the ones on either side of it.  
"Whose side are you own friend?" Cromwell asked as he looked at the long cut on Arthur's palm and at the many others like it which traversed their way up his arms before being covered by the dark brown overcoat he had donned with some reluctance. He preferred his pirate coat.

"I am on no-one's side, I cannot be," Arthur answered truthfully. He could not kill his own citizens and to side against one group would only cause their deaths to wound him more.  
"But if you could choose, which one?"  
"I do not know. I am bound to follow the king's orders- you know that- but your cause… these men believe so strongly in it! How… Why…"  
"Because God is with us. He believes in our cause and that is all we need. There. I would appreciate it friend if you did not kill me however."  
"I won't kill you…" Arthur hesitated in the tent's entrance, "I'm not sure about God… but England is with you. Remember that." And with that he left the tent.

Cromwell stood for a moment and rubbed his eyes. He could have sworn that for the briefest of moments he could hear his wife's voice, his children laughter and smell the sweet scent that was always present in their small but close knit home emitting from the unwilling Cavalier assassin.

Needless to say, Arthur was punished brutally for falling to kill Cromwell, which only strengthened his resolve to help usurp his king. To hell with his own well-being, he would help his people. Throughout the turmoil of all the centuries to come, Arthur would hold onto that one memory: the heavy feel of the axe in his hands as the figure stepped onto the scaffold; the expression on his face as he murmured a few words to the people accompanying him; the almost _delicious_ look of hope on his face as he laid eyes upon Arthur's hooded figure; then it crumpled as one word made its way out from Arthur's mouth, the word which he had been carrying around in his heart ever since that fateful night "Freedom!"

And then for the briefest of moments as thousands of voices groaned causing the very earth to vibrate, Arthur Kirkland, personification of England and fearsome pirate captain was free.

000ooo000  
**Okay so please review and tell me what you thought and also with any request you might have because apparently I cannot watch a history programme without being struck with Hetalia Fanfic ideas *shrugs*. Also (And I know this is shameless self-advertising) will you please go look at my NiChu story Mistakes? I've had loads of page views but only two favs and two reviews. Please? :D  
~QuickSilver**


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